A Few Brief Meetings
by Andy Longwood
Summary: Gandalf pays a visit to the river folk, where he encounters an old friend and a new acquaintance whose fate will weigh heavily on his mind. Chapter status: 2 out of 3.
1. A Wizard at the River

A/N: Another attempt at filling in a few gaps in Sméagol's past, namely, how Gandalf found out about it. 

A Few Brief Meetings

By Andy Longwood

Chapter 1

A Wizard at the River

A traveler sat on a hill by a river, where the banks had swelled to form a deep pool fringed with willows and rushes. The rushing water poured into the lake from the north end, where it spread and calmed, circulating sluggishly until it came to a small precipice where it tumbled over the edge and became a river again. Mist wove through the trees and birds twittered in the early morning cool as the grey east lightened slowly. The traveler was wrapped in a thick grey cloak that was stained with mud at the hem and fastened with a rough iron pin. Little pearls of mist had settled on his pointy blue hat and in his thick grey beard. His head was bowed so that the brim hid the rest of his face, and a long mane of greasy grey hair tumbled down his back. Gandalf the Grey was resting.

Presently he lifted his head, and his bushy grey eyebrows were wet with mist. He adjusted his position on the dewy grass and tilted his hat back. The hill was high, and he could see a great deal from here, despite the weather. The mist hung over the trees like a soft blanket, and the hulking shapes of grey mountains loomed vaguely in the foggy distance. Gandalf drew his cloak tighter about himself and pulled a wooden pipe from within the folds of his clothing. He placed the stem in his mouth, but did not light it. He had nothing to smoke, though the familiar feel of the pipe was pleasant.

Some time passed before he became aware of a new sound among the noise of the river and the birds. Someone was drawing closer, whistling tunelessly, and Gandalf turned to see who was coming. A shapeless hat first came into view, followed by the body of a young hobbit, carrying a fishing pole and a wooden bucket. The whistling stopped as the hobbit noticed the wizard, and tilted his hat back to reveal a round, good-natured face and sharper, cleverer eyes than Gandalf had seen in most hobbits. The boy stood and stared at him curiously, taking in the stained robes and the long, grey beard. Gandalf stared back, smiling politely.

"This is Reynard's property," the boy informed him suddenly. "He won't like that you're on it."

Gandalf raised his eyebrows. "Oh? And will he like that you're on it?"

"That's different," said the boy. "I'm family. You're a big person. Shouldn't you be with other big people?"

"Big people may wander if the impulse takes them. Shouldn't you be with other hobbits?" Gandalf countered. The boy tilted his head and half-frowned at the wizard.

"Reynard's a giant," he said informatively. "And he's not bad with an axe, either."

"I shall keep that in mind," Gandalf said, "If I ever need someone who is not bad with an axe."

"You're strange," the boy said.

"Perhaps where I come from, I am quite normal, and you are very strange," Gandalf suggested.

"No, you're strange," the boy assured him. "Nobody here is as tall as you. Not even Reynard, and he's pushing five feet. He's my uncle."

"How nice for you."

"Not really. He's allowed to punish me, and he's creative." The hobbit looked slightly sullen for a moment. "But he told me I could fish here, so here I am. I have permission." He looked at the wizard almost challengingly.

"Far be it from me to obstruct you," Gandalf said humbly, and the boy sat down a few feet away, still eyeing him suspiciously.

"Do you fish?" he asked, and tore up a large clump of grass.

"No," said Gandalf, watching the lad dig industriously through the dirt.

"I've only just learned," the boy informed him, pulling a large worm from the dirt. He impaled it impassively on the large hook at the end of his line, which he cast over the side of the hill and into the pool. "I'm not very good yet, but I'm going to be the best one day."

"I have heard it said that fish come to those who are quiet," Gandalf responded somewhat cantankerously, brushing drops of mist off the brim of his hat.

"You're not very polite, for a trespasser," his companion said, frowning at him a little. "You ought to be more polite about it."

"A trespasser may be less a vagrant than he seems," Gandalf remarked. "Kings may travel in the guise of beggars and learn about the worth of their subjects in that manner."

The boy stuck his fishing pole in the soft earth of the hillside and looked at him curiously. "What are you king of?" he asked.

"Me? I am no king," said Gandalf. "I am a wanderer, returning to pleasant lands."

"Well, I'm Sméagol," said the hobbit. "And I'm not king of anything." He tugged on his line and slouched comfortably on the ground. "Where have you wandered?"

"It would be better to ask where I have not."

"Gondor?"

"They are familiar with my name."

"The Misty Mountains?"

"I have stood upon the summits of the snowy peaks and watched the eagles fly below me."

"The sea?"

"And beyond."

"Well where haven't you been, then?" asked Sméagol.

"I have not been here," said Gandalf. He looked at the young hobbit and smiled. "Not for some time, at any rate."

"You must be old," Sméagol said. "How old are you? You look it. Do big people live for ages? You'd have to live for ages to go all those places. I know, because Grandmother has a map, and it's huge, it's got all the other lands, and it's hung in the parlor –"

"Do you always ask so many questions?" Gandalf said, frowning. Sméagol sighed.

"Yes," he said, resignedly. "Everyone always says I ask too many, but how else am I supposed to find things out?"

"You should learn when the time for questions is right," Gandalf said. "Mornings such as this, for instance, should be celebrated with silence."

The young hobbit did not say anything, and Gandalf breathed a sigh of contentment as the quiet sounds of the water and the birds became the primary noises around him once again.

"Silence is boring," Sméagol said, less than half a minute later. "What's so great about being silent when there's people around? I like to talk," he said, lifting his fishing pole up again.

"Then listen to the birds speak," Gandalf said, "Or speak to yourself, for I am weary and wish to enjoy the morning in peace."

He looked out over the trees

"It's just fog," Sméagol said, frowning at the view. "You can't even really see the mountains in it, and it happens every morning."

"One day, you will learn to appreciate it," Gandalf assured him. "However frequently the morning comes, it does not make it any less of a thing to celebrate."

"Why?"

Gandalf frowned. "You are inquisitive, aren't you?"

Sméagol had the decency to hang his head. "Sorry."

Gandalf sighed. "Look to the east, lad," he said. "There are lands in the east where the sun is never seen, where dark clouds boil in a poisoned sky and block out light of moon and stars at all hours of the night. There is no memory of sunlight there, no grass that grows upon the foul plains where creatures live and die without ever seeing the sun on the grass, or mist on the mountains, or streams of water that are fresh and clear. I have been there," he said, "I have stood beneath a darkened sky at noon and crossed poisoned waters on bridges of jagged rock. I have walked where all the land is rotten with the stench of decay, and nothing that lives has ever dreamed of the beauty of a world like this one you take for granted."

"Who would live there?" Sméagol asked softly. His eyes were wide and he looked at the wizard, his fishing pole forgotten. "I would leave. You didn't really _want_ to go there, did you?"

"It was where my road led," Gandalf said, "I go where it takes me."

And the boy looked out over the shrouded trees and into the brightening east, where light was beginning to stain the clouds gold and pink. A soft wind began to pick up and blow the mist away, and the leaves rustled and rained dew on the fragrant grass.

"I suppose this place is all right," he said thoughtfully, and Gandalf nodded.

It was all right, indeed.

o-

The matriarch of the River folk was at her desk when she heard the knock at her door. She knew instantly that it was not one of her family, who entered of their own accord, and rose from her chair by the fire, frowning slightly. She was not expecting company. She left the sitting room and opened the front door, glad that she had chosen to wear her nicest apron that day

A tall old man smiled at her from beneath the brim of a pointed blue hat.

"My dear lady, the years have been most gracious to you indeed," said Gandalf, and a huge smile spread across the elderly hobbit's face. She stepped outside.

"Gandalf!" she exclaimed, and the wizard bent over as the lady held her arms open to embrace him quickly. "Why, I have not seen you for an age. Will you be long? Or have you come to sweep some other young hobbit off on a wild quest for fame and fortune?"

"No on both counts," said Gandalf. "I am here to pay a visit to an old friend, whose fortune has aided her well, I see."

"Fortune has aided her less than wisdom," she said, still smiling at the old man, "but more than adventure, I'll warrant. Come in, come in. I'll have luncheon ready in an instant."

She turned and bustled back inside, and Gandalf ducked through the entrance to follow her.

"When did you arrive?" the matriarch asked as she made her way to the kitchen.

"Quite early," said the wizard, glancing about the cozy hobbit house. "I rested at the river along the way."

"Oh? Perhaps you encountered my grandson," she suggested. "He fishes there often."

"Is he yours? I thought he might be," said Gandalf, smiling. "He has the look of you, particularly around the eyes."

The matriarch laughed. "He has more of me in him than I would like to admit," she said. "If you're going to spirit someone off with you, it had better be him, and no doubt about that. My children will thank you."

"A nuisance, is he?" asked Gandalf, thinking perhaps that nuisance was a mild term for the boy.

"A terror more like it," she said, smiling wryly as she carried a plate of biscuits to a table. "I did say he took after me. Come, come! Sit down. I haven't got any tea ready, so you'll just have to wait, but that's the risk you take, coming and going as you do."

Something ran quickly past the open door, and the matriarch looked up. She barked out a command, and the boy from the river appeared in the doorway, leaning past the frame and looking sheepish. His Grandmother eyed him from her seat.

"You have an ill-favored look about you, Sméagol," she said. "What are you up to?"

"Me? Up to something? No!" Sméagol said, his eyes wide and innocent. "What would I be up to?"

"Something to harrow up the very souls of the faint-hearted, I imagine," his grandmother said dryly. "We have a visitor. Come and be sociable for a moment."

Sméagol spotted Gandalf at the table, and looked slightly surprised. "Oh, it's you. Hullo." He looked at his grandmother again. "Reynard says there's a wizard somewhere nearby. Can I go look?"

His grandmother raised her eyebrows, and a small, mischievous smile appeared on her face.

"Wizards are quite fond of rivers, aren't they, Gandalf? Or so I have heard," she said.

"Oh yes, quite fond indeed," Gandalf agreed. "Especially in the early mornings, so say the general consensus."

"Oh yes, I have been told that as well," his hostess agreed, her wrinkled face full of mirth as she struggled not to laugh at the expression on her grandson's face. Sméagol's eyes widened as he stared at Gandalf, who winked merrily and settled back in the tiny chair.

Suddenly the door burst open and another young hobbit ran in. He was much smaller and wirier than Sméagol, but with the same clever eyes. Currently they were wild with excitement, and he skidded on the rug in his hurry to get inside.

"Sméagol, Sméagol, Reynard says a wizard's been at his river and he's somewhere – hello Grandmother – he's somewhere nearby, so let's go . . . what are you doing?"

For Sméagol was flicking his eyes repeatedly at Gandalf, who sat awkwardly in a chair much to small for him, with his staff leaning against the mantelpiece, a damp, pointed hat sitting next to it on the table.

"Funny thing about wizards," said their grandmother, who was smiling almost mischievously, "They can hide quite well in plain sight. Good afternoon, Déagol."

The boys looked at each other, and their excitement was almost palpable. When Gandalf rose from his chair, they jumped nervously and stood back, watching him like hawks

"What about that tea, my dear?" said Gandalf to his hostess. "I believe I could do with a cup right about now."

"Yes, you had better eat well before you must be on your way," she agreed, rising and making her way to the kitchen. To her grandsons, she called "You have fun at the river, whether you find your wizard or not."

Sméagol and Déagol glanced at each other, grinned with excitement, and then raced off to brag to the village that their grandmother kept company with wizards.


	2. The Shadow Stirs

Chapter 2

The Shadow Stirs

Gandalf, wrapped in grey and leaning heavily upon his staff, knocked at the door of the matriarch's hole and waited. It had been many years since his last visit to the River-folk, and the wizard was worried that it had been too long. Yet all seemed calm with the small people who inhabited the land by the river, and the home of the matriarch was as well kept as ever.

The door opened, and a small, elderly woman opened the door, but it was not the matriarch.

Gandalf smiled. "Good evening . . . Roselda, if I am not mistaken?"

Roselda smiled with surprise and delight. "Gandalf! You have come again. Oh, this is unexpected! And me without the kettle on –"

"My dear Roselda, you have turned into your mother," Gandalf said, laughing merrily. "But tell me, where is she? I wish to visit her."

Roselda's face darkened with sorrow. "O, Master Gandalf. She passed on not long ago," she said. "I am terribly sorry."

Gandalf lowered his head. "I suspected I had been away too long. I am sorry too. Your mother was a great lady, and the world is a lesser place for loss of her."

"Please, come in," Roselda said. "We need not dwell on the past. You must be hungry. I will have the tea ready in an instant."

Gandalf smiled as he followed her inside, for obviously the matriarch of the river folk was not entirely gone as long as Roselda lived.

"And how are your people? All seems well enough in the village."

"Oh – it is peaceful, quite peaceful," Roselda said, opening cupboards in search of a kettle. "We are settling down to a well-earned life of quiet, we are."

"And how is your son, Déagol? He would be quite grown up by now, wouldn't he?" said Gandalf. Roselda paused by the kettle.

"He would be," she said softly, "if he were not dead."

Gandalf bowed his head. "I am sorry," he said, as an image of Roselda's son rose unbidden in his mind. "You must miss him."

"I do not dwell on it," said Roselda tersely. "Let us not talk of such things. It is far too nice an evening to spoil with unpleasantry."

"Then tell me of those who live – what about your nephew, Sméagol? How is the young rascal?"

Roselda dropped the kettle with a clang, and Gandalf knew immediately that he had said the wrong thing.

"I do not know, nor do I care," said Roselda, quietly and fiercely. "I do not concern myself with my son's murderer."

Gandalf bent over to pick up the kettle, partially to conceal his surprise. "These are ill tidings indeed," he said, placing the kettle over the fire for Roselda.

"I never liked him," Roselda said sharply, turning her back to the wizard and walking to the table, where a bucket of water sat beside a pile of potatoes and a scrubbing brush. She picked one up, dunked it in the water, and began scrubbing angrily. "I always thought he was an unwholesome lad. Nosy, nasty child, always pestering and asking questions and getting in where he didn't belong . . ."

Gandalf could remember the young hobbit he met at the river years ago. He had been impudent, and obviously mischievous, but he had hardly seemed unwholesome, or capable of murder.

"Is he dead as well, then?"

Roselda gave an angry snort. "The world should be so lucky. I do not know. He probably is dead now. The charity my mother showed that wretch, even after . . ."

"After what, madam?" Gandalf asked when Roselda paused.

"After he killed my son," Roselda said fiercely, and a potato slipped from her grasp and landed on the floor. She stood silently for a moment, and then bent it up.

"I am sorry," Gandalf said, as Roselda retrieved the potato and set it on the counter. "I did not intend to upset you."

"One never quite recovers from the loss of a child," she said, sinking into a chair. "Days go by when I think that perhaps I've begun to heal, but then something happens to remind me, and I –" She broke off, her eyes closed tightly and her face averted. She raised her hand to her eyes and surreptitiously wiped away the tears that had gathered in them. "Let us speak no more of this," she said, rising abruptly and moving back to her vegetables. "It is tiresome to be woeful. Do not ask me any more."

"I would not dream of it," Gandalf said.

"It's just . . . I get so furious whenever I think of how many times I gave that rascal the benefit of the doubt," she said, reaching for a large knife and slicing a tomato in half with a savage blow. "Do you know what kind of things he did? You simply have no idea. I'll tell you this – he stole from my mother."

"A vile deed," Gandalf agreed.

"He took to holing himself up away from everyone. He spent hours alone, talking to himself. That was how we caught him, you know. My brother heard him, ranting to himself about how he'd done it. How he'd killed my son for one thing or another." She brought the knife down hard again. "He was completely mad, of course. Going around on all fours and _gollum_-ing in his throat, and always saying 'we,' as if he had a friend in the world!" Roselda laughed harshly. She did not notice that Gandalf was listening even closer now.

"And he spied – and I have no idea how, but I swear, he had to have been invisible to find out the things he did."

"Invisible?" Gandalf repeated.

"Yes, invisible, he had to be!" Roselda exclaimed fiercely. "No one had any secrets from him, not anymore. Nothing that could be used for hurt or spite went past his notice. It was unnatural, I always said. We should have cast him out much sooner, but my mother hoped he'd come to his senses."

The fuming hobbit turned and shook her finger at Gandalf.

"He was a nuisance right from the start," she said. "And nuisances have no place here. So we cast him out, we did, right into the wild, and I don't know or care if he's still alive out there but I hope he died. And I hope he was miserable when he did, after what he put us all through."

She threw the last clean potato into a bowl and set the peeler down.

"My mother died soon after," Roselda said quietly. "She was stern with him, of course. She was stern with all of us, but she was fond of him, even after he went mad. Casting him out was her last act as the head of the family."

The woman lowered her head

"I am sorry," she said after a moment, sitting up to wipe the tears from her eyes. "You must think me a terrible hostess, going on about troubles that are already past . . . the tea should be ready. Please, will you have some?"

"Thank you," Gandalf said, and accepted the tea. His face, formerly mournful for lives lost in his absence, had grown grim, and he drank the tea swiftly. There was a curiously sober look in his eyes.

"You know, I did creep up on him once," Roselda said, as she filled the cup. "Only once, though. He had the uncanniest sense of hearing, you know, it seemed like he could hear something a mile away, and by then he'd have gone who knows where . . . but I surprised him once. He was hunched in a corner, all filth and madness, muttering to himself and fingering something in his hands."

Gandalf lowered his teacup, his curious eyes fixed upon Roselda.

"What did he have?" he asked quietly.

"I could not be sure," said Roselda, who frowned, "but it seemed to me . . . it seemed to me that he held a ring, yes, a golden ring."

Gandalf's teacup rattled in its saucer.

"I caught only the quickest flash of it," Roselda went on as if in a trance, her eyes staring back across the long years. "But oh, it was so very beautiful. The gold was quite flawless." She blinked slowly, and her hands twitched a little as if longing to caress something yet untouched. "I do wish I had seen it more closely."

Gandalf leaned towards the woman, his eyes bright and his face grim. "What else happened?"

"Well, I opened the door a little further, so that I could see better, and I heard him muttering strange things over it," said Roselda. "Calling it, calling it 'precious' and whatnot – and then he saw me, and flew into a rage, so I ran. He was a violent creature."

She looked up at Gandalf. "Probably some trinket he stole from my mother," she said, shaking her head at Sméagol's audacity. "She had many lovely things in the way of jewelry – where are you going?"

Gandalf rose from his chair and swept up his staff. "I must go, Madam. Thank you for the tea."

"But it is after dark, and you've only just gotten here!" Roselda objected, following him to the door. "At least stay for supper. You can't have eaten well out in the wild."

The wizard reached for his hat and placed it on his tangled grey hair. "Thank you, but no." He opened the door and walked outside into the cool air. Roselda followed him. "I have tarried too long as it is, and I have business to attend to. Good night."

"Good night," said Roselda, watching the old grey man walking hastily down the path. She shook her head and shut the door. There was no accounting for the strangeness of wizards.

That night she dreamed of her son, dying in a flash of gold, and she awoke in tears with the shadow of the past weighing heavily on her mind.


End file.
